Some Consequences of Four Incapacities

Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and the spirit of
Cartesianism -- that which principally distinguishes it from the scholasticism
which it displaced -- may be compendiously stated as follows:

1. It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal doubt; whereas
scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.

2. It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the
individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism had rested on the testimony of
sages and of the Catholic Church.

3. The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is replaced by a single thread
of inference depending often upon inconspicuous premisses.

4. Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook to explain all created
things. But there are many facts which Cartesianism not only does not explain but
renders absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that "God makes them so" is to be
regarded as an explanation.

In some, or all of these respects, most modern philosophers have been, in
effect, Cartesians. Now without wishing to return to scholasticism, it seems to
me that modern science and modern logic require us to stand upon a very different
platform from this.

1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices
which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These
prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does
not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere
self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method
will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in
form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the
North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly
upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find
reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he
has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us
not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

2. The same formalism appears in the Cartesian criterion, which amounts to this:
"Whatever I am clearly convinced of, is true." If I were really convinced, I
should have done with reasoning and should require no test of certainty. But thus
to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious. The
result is that metaphysicians will all agree that metaphysics has reached a pitch
of certainty far beyond that of the physical sciences; -- only they can agree
upon nothing else. In sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory has
been broached it is considered to be on probation until this agreement is
reached. After it is reached, the question of certainty becomes an idle one,
because there is no one left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably
hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it,
therefore, for the community of philosophers. Hence, if disciplined and candid
minds carefully examine a theory and refuse to accept it, this ought to create
doubts in the mind of the author of the theory himself.

3. Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as
to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful
scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than
to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is
no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so
slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.

4. Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely inexplicable,
unanalyzable ultimate; in short, something resulting from mediation itself not
susceptible of mediation. Now that anything is thus inexplicable can only be
known by reasoning from signs. But the only justification of an inference from
signs is that the conclusion explains the fact. To suppose the fact absolutely
inexplicable, is not to explain it, and hence this supposition is never
allowable.

In the last number of this journal will be found a piece entitled "Questions
concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man," which has been
written in this spirit of opposition to Cartesianism. That criticism of certain
faculties resulted in four denials, which for convenience may here be repeated:

1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world is
derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts.

2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined logically by
previous cognitions.

3. We have no power of thinking without signs.

4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable. These propositions
cannot be regarded as certain; and, in order to bring them to a further test, it
is now proposed to trace them out to their consequences. We may first consider
the first alone; then trace the consequences of the first and second; then see
what else will result from assuming the third also; and, finally, add the fourth
to our hypothetical premisses.

In accepting the first proposition, we must put aside all prejudices derived
from a philosophy which bases our knowledge of the external world on our
self-consciousness. We can admit no statement concerning what passes within us
except as a hypothesis necessary to explain what takes place in what we commonly
call the external world. Moreover when we have upon such grounds assumed one
faculty or mode of action of the mind, we cannot, of course, adopt any other
hypothesis for the purpose of explaining any fact which can be explained by our
first supposition, but must carry the latter as far as it will go. In other
words, we must, as far as we can do so without additional hypotheses, reduce all
kinds of mental action to one general type.

The class of modifications of consciousness with which we must commence our
inquiry must be one whose existence is indubitable, and whose laws are best
known, and, therefore (since this knowledge comes from the outside), which most
closely follows external facts; that is, it must be some kind of cognition. Here
we may hypothetically admit the second proposition of the former paper, according
to which there is no absolutely first cognition of any object, but cognition
arises by a continuous process. We must begin, then, with a process of cognition,
and with that process whose laws are best understood and most closely follow
external facts. This is no other than the process of valid inference, which
proceeds from its premiss, A, to its conclusion, B, only if, as a matter of fact,
such a proposition as B is always or usually true when such a proposition as A is
true. It is a consequence, then, of the first two principles whose results we are
to trace out, that we must, as far as we can, without any other supposition than
that the mind reasons, reduce all mental action to the formula of valid
reasoning.

But does the mind in fact go through the syllogistic process? It is
certainly very doubtful whether a conclusion -- as something existing in the mind
independently, like an image -- suddenly displaces two premisses existing in the
mind in a similar way. But it is a matter of constant experience, that if a man
is made to believe in the premisses, in the sense that he will act from them and
will say that they are true, under favorable conditions he will also be ready to
act from the conclusion and to say that that is true. Something, therefore, takes
place within the organism which is equivalent to the syllogistic process.

A valid inference is either complete or incomplete. An incomplete
inference is one whose validity depends upon some matter of fact not contained in
the premisses. This implied fact might have been stated as a premiss, and its
relation to the conclusion is the same whether it is explicitly posited or not,
since it is at least virtually taken for granted; so that every valid incomplete
argument is virtually complete. Complete arguments are divided into simple and
complex. A complex argument is one which from three or more premisses concludes
what might have been concluded by successive steps in reasonings each of which is
simple. Thus, a complex inference comes to the same thing in the end as a
succession of simple inferences.

A complete, simple, and valid argument, or syllogism, is either apodictic or
probable. An apodictic or deductive syllogism is one whose validity depends
unconditionally upon the relation of the fact inferred to the facts posited in
the premisses. A syllogism whose validity should depend not merely upon its
premisses, but upon the existence of some other knowledge, would be impossible;
for either this other knowledge would be posited, in which case it would be a
part of the premisses, or it would be implicitly assumed, in which case the
inference would be incomplete. But a syllogism whose validity depends partly upon
the non-existence of some other knowledge, is a probable syllogism.

A few examples will render this plain. The two following arguments are
apodictic or deductive:

1. No series of days of which the first and last are different days of the week
exceeds by one a multiple of seven days; now the first and last days of any
leap-year are different days of the week, and therefore no leap-year consists of
a number of days one greater than a multiple of seven.

2. Among the vowels there are no double letters; but one of the double letters
(w) is compounded of two vowels: hence, a letter compounded of two vowels is not
necessarily itself a vowel.

In both these cases, it is plain that as long as the premisses are true, however
other facts may be, the conclusions will be true. On the other hand, suppose that
we reason as follows:--"A certain man had the Asiatic cholera. He was in a state
of collapse, livid, quite cold, and without perceptible pulse. He was bled
copiously. During the process he came out of collapse, and the next morning was
well enough to be about. Therefore, bleeding tends to cure the cholera." This is
a fair probable inference, provided that the premisses represent our whole
knowledge of the matter. But if we knew, for example, that recoveries from
cholera were apt to be sudden, and that the physician who had reported this case
had known of a hundred other trials of the remedy without communicating the
result, then the inference would lose all its validity.

The absence of knowledge which is essential to the validity of any probable
argument relates to some question which is determined by the argument itself.
This question, like every other, is whether certain objects have certain
characters. Hence, the absence of knowledge is either whether besides the objects
which, according to the premisses, possess certain characters, any other objects
possess them; or, whether besides the characters which, according to the
premisses, belong to certain objects, any other characters not necessarily
involved in these belong to the same objects. In the former case, the reasoning
proceeds as though all the objects which have certain characters were known, and
this is induction; in the latter case, the inference proceeds as though all the
characters requisite to the determination of a certain object or class were
known, and this is hypothesis. This distinction, also, may be made more plain by
examples.

Suppose we count the number of occurrences of the different letters in a
certain English book, which we may call A. Of course, every new letter which we
add to our count will alter the relative number of occurrences of the different
letters; but as we proceed with our counting, this change will be less and less.
Suppose that we find that as we increase the number of letters counted, the
relative number of e's approaches nearly 11 1/4 per cent of the whole, that of
the t's 8 1/2 per cent, that of the a's 8 per cent, that of the s's 7 1/2 per
cent, etc. Suppose we repeat the same observations with half a dozen other
English writings (which we may designate as B, C, D, E, F, G) with the like
result. Then we may infer that in every English writing of some length, the
different letters occur with nearly those relative frequencies.

Now this argument depends for its validity upon our not knowing the proportion of
letters in any English writing besides A, B, C, D, E, F and G. For if we know it
in respect to H, and it is not nearly the same as in the others, our conclusion
is destroyed at once; if it is the same, then the legitimate inference is from A,
B, C, D, E, F, G and H, and not from the first seven alone. This, therefore, is
an induction.

Suppose, next, that a piece of writing in cipher is presented to us, without the
key. Suppose we find that it contains something less than 26 characters, one of
which occurs about 11 per cent of all the times, another 8 1/2 per cent,
another 8 per cent, and another 7 1/2 per cent. Suppose that when we substitute
for these e, t, a and s, respectively, we are able to see how single letters may
be substituted for each of the other characters so as to make sense in English,
provided, however, that we allow the spelling to be wrong in some cases. If the
writing is of any considerable length, we may infer with great probability that
this is the meaning of the cipher.

The validity of this argument depends upon there being no other known characters
of the writing in cipher which would have any weight in the matter; for if there
are -- if we know, for example, whether or not there is any other solution of it
-- this must be allowed its effect in supporting or weakening the conclusion.
This, then, is hypothesis.

All valid reasoning is either deductive, inductive, or hypothetic; or else
it combines two or more of these characters. Deduction is pretty well treated in
most logical textbooks; but it will be necessary to say a few words about
induction and hypothesis in order to render what follows more intelligible.

Induction may be defined as an argument which proceeds upon the assumption
that all the members of a class or aggregate have all the characters which are
common to all those members of this class concerning which it is known, whether
they have these characters or not; or, in other words, which assumes that that is
true of a whole collection which is true of a number of instances taken from it
at random. This might be called statistical argument. In the long run, it must
generally afford pretty correct conclusions from true premisses. If we have a bag
of beans partly black and partly white, by counting the relative proportions of
the two colors in several different handfuls, we can approximate more or less to
the relative proportions in the whole bag, since a sufficient number of handfuls
would constitute all the beans in the bag. The central characteristic and key to
induction is, that by taking the conclusion so reached as major premiss of a
syllogism, and the proposition stating that such and such objects are taken from
the class in question as the minor premiss, the other premiss of the induction
will follow from them deductively. Thus, in the above example we concluded that
all books in English have about 11 1/4 per cent of their letters e's. From that
as major premiss, together with the proposition that A, B, C, D, E, F and G are
books in English, it follows deductively that A, B, C, D, E, F and G have about
11 1/4 per cent of their letters e's. Accordingly, induction has been defined by
Aristotle as the inference of the major premiss of a syllogism from its minor
premiss and conclusion. The function of an induction is to substitute for a
series of many subjects, a single one which embraces them and an indefinite
number of others. Thus it is a species of "reduction of the manifold to unity."

Hypothesis may be defined as an argument which proceeds upon the assumption
that a character which is known necessarily to involve a certain number of
others, may be probably predicated of any object which has all the characters
which this character is known to involve. Just as induction may be regarded as
the inference of the major premiss of a syllogism, so hypothesis may be regarded
as the inference of the minor premiss, from the other two propositions. Thus, the
example taken above consists of two such inferences of the minor premisses of the
following syllogisms:

1. Every English writing of some length in which such and such characters denote
e, t, a, and s, has about 11 1/4 per cent of the first sort of marks, 8 1/2 of
the second, 8 of the third, and 7 1/2 of the fourth.
This secret writing is an English writing of some length, in which such and such
characters denote e, t, a, and s, respectively:
[Ergo,] This secret writing has about 11 1/4 per cent of its characters of the first
kind, 8 1/2 of the second, 8 of the third, and 7 1/2 of the fourth.

2. A passage written with such an alphabet makes sense when such and such letters
are severally substituted for such and such characters.
This secret writing is written with such an alphabet.
[Ergo,] This secret writing makes sense when such and such substitutions are made.

The function of hypothesis is to substitute for a great series of predicates forming no unity in themselves, a single one (or small number) which involves
them all, together (perhaps) with an indefinite number of others. It is,
therefore, also a reduction of a manifold to unity. Every deductive syllogism
may be put into the form

If A, then B;
But A:
[Ergo,] B.

And as the minor premiss in this form appears as antecedent or reason of a
hypothetical proposition, hypothetic inference may be called reasoning from
consequent to antecedent.

The argument from analogy, which a popular writer upon logic calls
reasoning from particulars to particulars, derives its validity from its
combining the characters of induction and hypothesis, being analyzable either
into a deduction or an induction, or a deduction and a hypothesis.

But though inference is thus of three essentially different species, it also
belongs to one genus. We have seen that no conclusion can be legitimately derived
which could not have been reached by successions of arguments having two
premisses each, and implying no fact not asserted.

Either of these premisses is a proposition asserting that certain objects
have certain characters. Every term of such a proposition stands either for
certain objects or for certain characters. The conclusion may be regarded as a
proposition substituted in place of either premiss, the substitution being
justified by the fact stated in the other premiss. The conclusion is accordingly
derived from either premiss by substituting either a new subject for the subject
of the premiss, or a new predicate for the predicate of the premiss, or by both
substitutions. Now the substitution of one term for another can be justified only
so far as the term substituted represents only what is represented in the term
replaced. If, therefore, the conclusion be denoted by the formula,

S is P;

and this conclusion be derived, by a change of subject, from a premiss which may
on this account be expressed by the formula,

M is P,

then the other premiss must assert that whatever thing is represented by S is
represented by M, or that

Every S is an M;

while, if the conclusion, S is P, is derived from either premiss by a change of
predicate, that premiss may be written

S is M;

and the other premiss must assert that whatever characters are implied in P are
implied in M, or that

Whatever is M is P.

In either case, therefore, the syllogism must be capable of expression in the
form,

S is M;M is P:
[Ergo,] S is P.

Finally, if the conclusion differs from either of its premisses, both in subject
and predicate, the form of statement of conclusion and premiss may be so altered
that they shall have a common term. This can always be done, for if P is the
premiss and C the conclusion, they may be stated thus:

The state of things represented in P is real,
and
The state of things represented in C is real.

In this case the other premiss must in some form virtually assert that every
state of things such as is represented by C is the state of things represented in
P.

All valid reasoning, therefore, is of one general form; and in seeking to reduce
all mental action to the formulæ of valid inference, we seek to reduce it to one
single type.

An apparent obstacle to the reduction of all mental action to the type of
valid inferences is the existence of fallacious reasoning. Every argument implies
the truth of a general principle of inferential procedure (whether involving some
matter of fact concerning the subject of argument, or merely a maxim relating to
a system of signs), according to which it is a valid argument. If this principle
is false, the argument is a fallacy; but neither a valid argument from false
premisses, nor an exceedingly weak, but not altogether illegitimate, induction or
hypothesis, however its force may be over-estimated, however false its
conclusion, is a fallacy.

Now words, taken just as they stand, if in the form of an argument, thereby
do imply whatever fact may be necessary to make the argument conclusive; so that
to the formal logician, who has to do only with the meaning of the words
according to the proper principles of interpretation, and not with the intention
of the speaker as guessed at from other indications, the only fallacies should be
such as are simply absurd and contradictory, either because their conclusions are
absolutely inconsistent with their premisses, or because they connect
propositions by a species of illative conjunction, by which they cannot under any
circumstances be validly connected.

But to the psychologist an argument is valid only if the premisses from
which the mental conclusion is derived would be sufficient, if true, to justify
it, either by themselves, or by the aid of other propositions which had
previously been held for true. But it is easy to show that all inferences made by
man, which are not valid in this sense, belong to four classes, viz.: 1. Those
whose premisses are false; 2. Those which have some little force, though only a
little; 3. Those which result from confusion of one proposition with another; 4.
Those which result from the indistinct apprehension, wrong application, or
falsity, of a rule of inference. For, if a man were to commit a fallacy not of
either of these classes, he would, from true premisses conceived with perfect
distinctness, without being led astray by any prejudice or other judgment serving
as a rule of inference, draw a conclusion which had really not the least
relevancy. If this could happen, calm consideration and care could be of little
use in thinking, for caution only serves to insure our taking all the facts into
account, and to make those which we do take account of, distinct; nor can
coolness do anything more than to enable us to be cautious, and also to prevent
our being affected by a passion in inferring that to be true which we wish were
true, or which we fear may be true, or in following some other wrong rule of
inference. But experience shows that the calm and careful consideration of the
same distinctly conceived premisses (including prejudices) will insure the
pronouncement of the same judgment by all men. Now if a fallacy belongs to the
first of these four classes and its premisses are false, it is to be presumed
that the procedure of the mind from these premisses to the conclusion is either
correct, or errs in one of the other three ways; for it cannot be supposed that
the mere falsity of the premisses should affect the procedure of reason when that
falsity is not known to reason. If the fallacy belongs to the second class and
has some force, however little, it is a legitimate probable argument, and belongs
to the type of valid inference. If it is of the third class and results from the
confusion of one proposition with another, this confusion must be owing to a
resemblance between the two propositions; that is to say, the person reasoning,
seeing that one proposition has some of the characters which belong to the other,
concludes that it has all the essential characters of the other, and is
equivalent to it. Now this is a hypothetic inference, which though it may be
weak, and though its conclusion happens to be false, belongs to the type of valid
inferences; and, therefore, as the nodus of the fallacy lies in this confusion,
the procedure of the mind in these fallacies of the third class conforms to the
formula of valid inference. If the fallacy belongs to the fourth class, it either
results from wrongly applying or misapprehending a rule of inference, and so is a
fallacy of confusion, or it results from adopting a wrong rule of inference. In
this latter case, this rule is in fact taken as a premiss, and therefore the
false conclusion is owing merely to the falsity of a premiss. In every fallacy,
therefore, possible to the mind of man, the procedure of the mind conforms to the
formula of valid inference.

The third principle whose consequences we have to deduce is, that, whenever
we think, we have present to the consciousness some feeling, image, conception,
or other representation, which serves as a sign. But it follows from our own
existence (which is proved by the occurrence of ignorance and error) that
everything which is present to us is a phenomenal manifestation of ourselves.
This does not prevent its being a phenomenon of something without us, just as a
rainbow is at once a manifestation both of the sun and of the rain. When we
think, then, we ourselves, as we are at that moment, appear as a sign. Now a sign
has, as such, three references: first, it is a sign to some thought which
interprets it; second, it is a sign for some object to which in that thought it
is equivalent; third, it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which brings it
into connection with its object. Let us ask what the three correlates are to
which a thought-sign refers.

(1) When we think, to what thought does that thought-sign which is ourself
address itself? It may, through the medium of outward expression, which it
reaches perhaps only after considerable internal development, come to address
itself to thought of another person. But whether this happens or not, it is
always interpreted by a subsequent thought of our own. If, after any thought, the
current of ideas flows on freely, it follows the law of mental association. In
that case, each former thought suggests something to the thought which follows
it, i.e., is the sign of something to this latter. Our train of thought may, it
is true, be interrupted. But we must remember that, in addition to the principal
element of thought at any moment, there are a hundred things in our mind to which
but a small fraction of attention or consciousness is conceded. It does not,
therefore, follow, because a new constituent of thought gets the uppermost that
the train of thought which it displaces is broken off altogether. On the
contrary, from our second principle, that there is no intuition or cognition not
determined by previous cognitions, it follows that the striking in of a new
experience is never an instantaneous affair, but is an event occupying time, and
coming to pass by a continuous process. Its prominence in consciousness,
therefore, must probably be the consummation of a growing process; and if so,
there is no sufficient cause for the thought which had been the leading one just
before, to cease abruptly and instantaneously. But if a train of thought ceases
by gradually dying out, it freely follows its own law of association as long as
it lasts, and there is no moment at which there is a thought belonging to this
series, subsequently to which there is not a thought which interprets or repeats
it. There is no exception, therefore, to the law that every thought-sign is
translated or interpreted in a subsequent one, unless it be that all thought
comes to an abrupt and final end in death.

(2) The next question is: For what does the thought-sign stand -- what does
it name -- what is its suppositum? The outward thing, undoubtedly, when a real
outward thing is thought of. But still, as the thought is determined by a
previous thought of the same object, it only refers to the thing through denoting
this previous thought. Let us suppose, for example, that Toussaint is thought of,
and first thought of as a Negro, but not distinctly as a man. If this
distinctness is afterwards added, it is through the thought that a Negro is a
man; that is to say, the subsequent thought, man, refers to the outward thing by
being predicated of that previous thought, Negro, which has been had of that
thing. If we afterwards think of Toussaint as a general, then we think that this
negro, this man, was a general. And so in every case the subsequent thought
denotes what was thought in the previous thought.

(3) The thought-sign stands for its object in the respect which is thought;
that is to say, this respect is the immediate object of consciousness in the
thought, or, in other words, it is the thought itself, or at least what the
thought is thought to be in the subsequent thought to which it is a sign.

We must now consider two other properties of signs which are of great
importance in the theory of cognition. Since a sign is not identical with the
thing signified, but differs from the latter in some respects, it must plainly
have some characters which belong to it in itself, and have nothing to do with
its representative function. These I call the material qualities of the sign. As
examples of such qualities, take in the word "man," its consisting of three
letters -- in a picture, its being flat and without relief. In the second place,
a sign must be capable of being connected (not in the reason but really) with
another sign of the same object, or with the object itself. Thus, words would be
of no value at all unless they could be connected into sentences by means of a
real copula which joins signs of the same thing. The usefulness of some signs --
as a weathercock, a tally, &c. -- consists wholly in their being really
connected with the very things they signify. In the case of a picture such a
connection is not evident, but it exists in the power of association which
connects the picture with the brain-sign which labels it. This real, physical
connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection
with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign. Now the
representative function of a sign lies neither in its material quality nor in its
pure demonstrative application; because it is something which the sign is, not in
itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought, while
both of the characters just defined belong to the sign independently of its
addressing any thought. And yet if I take all the things which have certain
qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to
each, they become fit to be signs. If they are not regarded as such they are not
actually signs, but they are so in the same sense, for example, in which an
unseen flower can be said to be red, this being also a term relative to a mental
affection.

Consider a state of mind which is a conception. It is a conception by virtue
of having a meaning, a logical comprehension; and if it is applicable to any
object, it is because that object has the characters contained in the
comprehension of this conception. Now the logical comprehension of a thought is
usually said to consist of the thoughts contained in it; but thoughts are events,
acts of the mind. Two thoughts are two events separated in time, and one cannot
literally be contained in the other. It may be said that all thoughts exactly
similar are regarded as one; and that to say that one thought contains another,
means that it contains one exactly similar to that other. But how can two
thoughts be similar? Two objects can only be regarded as similar if they are
compared and brought together in the mind. Thoughts have no existence except in
the mind; only as they are regarded do they exist. Hence, two thoughts cannot be
similar unless they are brought together in the mind. But, as to their existence,
two thoughts are separated by an interval of time. We are too apt to imagine that
we can frame a thought similar to a past thought, by matching it with the latter,
as though this past thought were still present to us. But it is plain that the
knowledge that one thought is similar to or in any way truly representative of
another, cannot be derived from immediate perception, but must be an hypothesis
(unquestionably fully justifiable by facts), and that therefore the formation of
such a representing thought must be dependent upon a real effective force behind
consciousness, and not merely upon a mental comparison. What we must mean,
therefore, by saying that one concept is contained in another, is that we
normally represent one to be in the other; that is, that we form a particular
kind of judgment of
which the subject signifies one concept and the predicate the other.

No thought in itself, then, no feeling in itself, contains any others, but
is absolutely simple and unanalyzable; and to say that it is composed of other
thoughts and feelings, is like saying that a movement upon a straight line is
composed of the two movements of which it is the resultant; that is to say, it is
a metaphor, or fiction, parallel to the truth. Every thought, however artificial
and complex, is, so far as it is immediately present, a mere sensation without
parts, and therefore, in
itself, without similarity to any other, but incomparable with any other and absolutely sui generis. Whatever is wholly
incomparable with anything else is wholly inexplicable, because explanation
consists in bringing things under general laws or under natural classes. Hence
every thought, in so far as it is a feeling of a peculiar sort, is simply an
ultimate, inexplicable fact. Yet this does not conflict with my postulate that
that fact should be allowed to stand as inexplicable; for, on the one hand, we
never can think, "This is present to me," since, before we have time to make the
reflection, the sensation is past, and, on the other hand, when once past, we can
never bring back the quality of the feeling as it was in and for itself, or know
what it was like in itself, or even discover the existence of this quality except
by a corollary from our general theory of ourselves, and then not in its
idiosyncrasy, but only as something present. But, as something present, feelings
are all alike and require no explanation, since they contain only what is
universal. So that nothing which we can truly predicate of feelings is left
inexplicable, but only something which we cannot reflectively know. So that we do
not fall into the contradiction of making the Mediate immediable. Finally, no
present actual thought (which is a mere feeling) has any meaning, any
intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what
this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so
that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual. It may be
objected, that if no thought has any meaning, all thought is without meaning. But
this is a fallacy similar to saying, that, if in no one of the successive spaces
which a body fills there is room for motion, there is no room for motion
throughout the whole. At
no one instant in my state of mind is there cognition or representation, but in the relation of my states of mind at different instants
there is. In short, the Immediate (and therefore in itself unsusceptible of
mediation -- the Unanalyzable, the Inexplicable, the Unintellectual) runs in a
continuous stream through our lives; it is the sum total of consciousness, whose
mediation, which is the continuity of it, is brought about by a real effective
force behind consciousness.

Thus, we have in thought three elements:
first, the representative function which makes it a representation;
second, the pure denotative application, or real connection, which
brings one thought into relation with
another; and third, the material quality, or how it feels, which
gives thought its quality.

That a sensation is not necessarily an intuition, or first impression of
sense, is very evident in the case of the sense of beauty; and has been shown, elsewhere, in the case of sound. When the sensation beautiful is determined by
previous cognitions, it always arises as a predicate; that is, we think that
something is beautiful. Whenever a sensation thus arises in consequence of
others, induction shows that those others are more or less complicated. Thus, the
sensation of a particular kind of sound arises in consequence of impressions upon
the various nerves of the ear being combined in a particular way, and following
one another with a certain rapidity. A sensation of color depends upon
impressions upon the eye following one another in a regular manner, and with a
certain rapidity. The sensation of beauty arises upon a manifold of other
impressions. And this will be found to hold good in all cases. Secondly, all
these sensations are in themselves simple, or more so than the sensations which
give rise to them. Accordingly, a sensation is a simple predicate taken in place
of a complex predicate; in other words, it fulfills the function of an
hypothesis. But the general principle that every thing to which such and such a
sensation belongs, has such and such a complicated series of predicates, is not
one determined by reason (as we have seen), but is of an arbitrary nature. Hence,
the class of hypothetic inferences which the arising of a sensation resembles, is
that of reasoning from definition to definitum, in which the major premiss is of
an arbitrary nature. Only in this mode of reasoning, this premiss is determined
by the conventions of language, and expresses the occasion upon which a word is
to be used; and in the formation of a sensation, it is determined by the
constitution of our nature, and expresses the occasions upon which sensation, or
a natural mental sign, arises. Thus, the sensation, so far as it represents
something, is determined, according to a logical law, by previous cognitions;
that is to say, these cognitions determine that there shall be a sensation. But
so far as the sensation is a mere feeling of a particular sort, it is determined
only by an inexplicable, occult power; and so far, it is not a representation,
but only the material quality of a representation. For just as in reasoning from
definition to definitum, it is indifferent to the logician how the defined word
shall sound, or how many letters it shall contain, so in the case of this
constitutional word, it is not determined by an inward law how it shall feel in
itself. A feeling, therefore, as a feeling, is merely the material quality of a
mental sign.

But there is no feeling which is not also a representation, a predicate of
something determined logically by the feelings which precede it. For if there are
any such feelings not predicates, they are the emotions. Now every emotion has a
subject. If a man is angry, he is saying to himself that this or that is vile and
outrageous. If he is in joy, he is saying "this is delicious." If he is
wondering, he is saying "this is strange." In short, whenever a man feels, he is
thinking of something. Even those passions which have no definite object -- as
melancholy -- only come to consciousness through tinging the objects of thought.
That which makes us look upon the emotions more as affections of self than other
cognitions, is that we have found them more dependent upon our accidental
situation at the moment than other cognitions; but that is only to say that they
are cognitions too narrow to be useful. The emotions, as a little observation
will show, arise when our attention is strongly drawn to complex and
inconceivable circumstances. Fear arises when we cannot predict our fate; joy, in
the case of certain indescribable and peculiarly complex sensations. If there are
some indications that something greatly for my interest, and which I have
anticipated would happen, may not happen; and if, after weighing probabilities,
and inventing safeguards, and straining for further information, I find myself
unable to come to any fixed conclusion in reference to the future, in the place
of that intellectual hypothetic inference which I seek, the feeling of anxiety
arises. When something happens for which I cannot account, I wonder. When I
endeavor to realize to myself what I never can do, a pleasure in the future, I
hope. "I do not understand you," is the phrase of an angry man. The
indescribable, the ineffable, the incomprehensible, commonly excite emotion; but
nothing is so chilling as a scientific explanation. Thus an emotion is always a
simple predicate substituted by an operation of the mind for a highly complicated
predicate. Now if we consider that a very complex predicate demands explanation
by means of an hypothesis, that that hypothesis must be a simpler predicate
substituted for that complex one; and that when we have an emotion, an
hypothesis, strictly speaking, is hardly possible -- the analogy of the parts
played by emotion and hypothesis is very striking. There is, it is true, this
difference between an emotion and an intellectual hypothesis, that we have reason
to say in the case of the latter, that to whatever the simple hypothetic
predicate can be applied, of that the complex predicate is true; whereas, in the
case of an emotion this is a proposition for which no reason can be given, but
which is determined merely by our emotional constitution. But this corresponds
precisely to the difference between hypothesis and reasoning from definition to
definitum, and thus it would appear that emotion is nothing but sensation. There
appears to be a difference, however, between emotion and sensation, and I would
state it as follows:

There is some reason to think that, corresponding to every feeling within
us, some motion takes place in our bodies. This property of the thought-sign,
since it has no rational dependence upon the meaning of the sign, may be compared
with what I have called the material quality of the sign; but it differs from the
latter inasmuch as it is not essentially necessary that it should be felt in
order that there should be any thought-sign. In the case of a sensation, the
manifold of impressions which precede and determine it are not of a kind, the
bodily motion corresponding to which comes from any large ganglion or from the
brain, and probably for this reason the sensation produces no great commotion in
the bodily organism; and the sensation itself is not a thought which has a very
strong influence upon the current of thought except by virtue of the information
it may serve to afford. An emotion, on the other hand, comes much later in the
development of thought -- I mean, further from the first beginning of the
cognition of its object -- and the thoughts which determine it already have
motions corresponding to them in the brain, or the chief ganglion; consequently,
it produces large movements in the body, and independently of its representative
value, strongly affects the current of thought. The animal motions to which I
allude, are, in the first place and obviously, blushing, blenching, staring,
smiling, scowling, pouting, laughing, weeping, sobbing, wriggling, flinching,
trembling, being petrified, sighing, sniffing, shrugging, groaning, heartsinking,
trepidation, swelling of the heart, etc., etc. To these may, perhaps, be added,
in the second place, other more complicated actions, which nevertheless spring
from a direct impulse and not from deliberation.

That which distinguishes both sensations proper and emotions from the
feeling of a thought, is that in the case of the two former the material quality
is made prominent, because the thought has no relation of reason to the thoughts
which determine it, which exists in the last case and detracts from the attention
given to the mere feeling. By there being no relation of reason to the
determining thoughts, I mean that there is nothing in the content of the thought
which explains why it should arise only on occasion of these determining
thoughts. If there is such a relation of reason, if the thought is essentially
limited in its application to these objects, then the thought comprehends a
thought other than itself; in other words, it is then a complex thought. An
incomplex thought can, therefore, be nothing but a sensation or emotion, having
no rational character. This is very different from the ordinary doctrine,
according to which the very highest and most metaphysical conceptions are
absolutely simple. I shall be asked how such a conception of a being is to be
analyzed, or whether I can ever define one, two, and three, without a diallelon.
Now I shall admit at once that neither of these conceptions can be separated into
two others higher than itself; and in that sense, therefore, I fully admit that
certain very metaphysical and eminently intellectual notions are absolutely
simple. But though these concepts cannot be defined by genus and difference,
there is another way in which they can be defined. All determination is by
negation; we can first recognize any character only by putting an object which
possesses it into comparison with an object which possesses it not. A conception,
therefore, which was quite universal in every respect would be unrecognizable and
impossible. We do not obtain the conception of Being, in the sense implied in the
copula, by observing that all the things which we can think of have something in
common, for there is no such thing to be observed. We get it by reflecting upon
signs -- words or thoughts; we observe that different predicates may be attached
to the same subject, and that each makes some conception applicable to the
subject; then we imagine that a subject has something true of it merely because a
predicate (no matter what) is attached to it -- and that we call Being. The
conception of being is, therefore, a conception about a sign -- a thought, or
word; and since it is not applicable to every sign, it is not primarily
universal, although it is so in its mediate application to things. Being,
therefore, may be defined; it may be defined, for example, as that which is
common to the objects included in any class, and to the objects not included in
the same class. But it is nothing new to say that metaphysical conceptions are
primarily and at bottom thoughts about words, or thoughts about thoughts; it is
the doctrine both of Aristotle (whose categories are parts of speech) and of Kant
(whose categories are the characters of different kinds of propositions).

Sensation and the power of abstraction or attention may be regarded as, in
one sense, the sole constituents of all thought. Having considered the former,
let us now attempt some analysis of the latter. By the force of attention, an
emphasis is put upon one of the objective elements of consciousness. This
emphasis is, therefore, not itself an object of immediate consciousness; and in
this respect it differs entirely from a feeling. Therefore, since the emphasis,
nevertheless, consists in some effect upon consciousness, and so can exist only
so far as it affects our knowledge; and since an act cannot be supposed to
determine that which precedes it in time, this act can consist only in the
capacity which the cognition emphasized has for producing an effect upon memory,
or otherwise influencing subsequent thought. This is confirmed by the fact that
attention is a matter of continuous quantity; for continuous quantity, so far as
we know it, reduces itself in the last analysis to time. Accordingly, we find
that attention does, in fact, produce a very great effect upon subsequent
thought. In the first place, it strongly affects memory, a thought being
remembered for a longer time the greater the attention originally paid to it. In
the second place, the greater the attention, the closer the connection and the
more accurate the logical sequence of thought. In the third place, by attention a
thought may be recovered which has been forgotten. From these facts, we gather
that attention is the power by which thought at one time is connected with and
made to relate to thought at another time; or, to apply the conception of thought
as a sign, that it is the pure demonstrative application of a thought-sign.

Attention is roused when the same phenomenon presents itself repeatedly on
different occasions, or the same predicate in different subjects. We see that A
has a certain character, that B has the same, C has the same; and this excites
our attention, so that we say, "These have this character." Thus attention is an
act of induction; but it is an induction which does not increase our knowledge,
because our "these" covers nothing but the instances experienced. It is, in
short, an argument from enumeration.

Attention produces effects upon the nervous system. These effects are
habits, or nervous associations. A habit arises, when, having had the sensation
of performing a certain act, m, on several occasions a, b, c, we come to do it
upon every occurrence of the general event, l, of which a, b and c are special
cases. That is to say, by the cognition that

Every case of a, b, or c, is a case of m,

is determined the cognition that

Every case of l is a case of m.

Thus the formation of a habit is an induction, and is therefore necessarily
connected with attention or abstraction. Voluntary actions result from the
sensations produced by habits, as instinctive actions result from our original
nature.

We have thus seen that every sort of modification of consciousness --
Attention, Sensation, and Understanding -- is an inference. But the objection may
be made that inference deals only with general terms, and that an image, or
absolutely singular representation, cannot therefore be inferred.

"Singular" and "individual" are equivocal terms. A singular may mean that
which can be but in one place at one time. In this sense it is not opposed to
general. The sun is a singular in this sense, but, as is explained in every good
treatise on logic, it is a general term. I may have a very general conception of
Hermolaus Barbarus, but still I conceive him only as able to be in one place at
one time. When an image is said to be singular, it is meant that it is absolutely
determinate in all respects. Every possible character, or the negative thereof,
must be true of such an image. In the words of the most eminent expounder of the
doctrine, the image of a man "must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny;
a straight or a crooked; a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man." It must be
of a man with his mouth open or his mouth shut, whose hair is precisely of such
and such a shade, and whose figure has precisely such and such proportions. No
statement of Locke has been so scouted by all friends of images as his denial
that the "idea" of a triangle must be either of an obtuse-angled, right-angled,
or acute-angled triangle. In fact, the image of a triangle must be of one, each
of whose angles is of a certain number of degrees, minutes, and seconds.

This being so, it is apparent that no man has a true image of the road to
his office, or of any other real thing. Indeed he has no image of it at all
unless he can not only recognize it, but imagines it (truly or falsely) in all
its infinite details. This being the case, it becomes very doubtful whether we
ever have any such thing as an image in our imagination. Please, reader, to look
at a bright red book, or other brightly colored object, and then to shut your
eyes and say whether you see that color, whether brightly or faintly -- whether,
indeed, there is anything like sight there. Hume and the other followers of
Berkeley maintain that there is no difference between the sight and the memory of
the red book except in "their different degrees of force and vivacity." "The
colors which the memory employs," says Hume, "are faint and dull compared with
those in which our original perceptions are clothed." If this were a correct
statement of the difference, we should remember the book as being less red than
it is; whereas, in fact, we remember the color with very great precision for a
few moments (please to test this point, reader), although we do not see anything
like it. We carry away absolutely nothing of the color except the consciousness
that we could recognize it. As a further proof of this, I will request the reader
to try a little experiment. Let him call up, if he can, the image of a horse --
not of one which he has ever seen, but of an imaginary one -- and before reading
further let him by contemplation fix the image in his memory . . . . Has the reader done as requested? for I protest that it is not fair play to read
further without doing so. -- Now, the reader can say in general of what color
that horse was, whether grey, bay, or black. But he probably cannot say precisely
of what shade it was. He cannot state this as exactly as he could just after
having seen such a horse. But why, if he had an image in his mind which no more
had the general color than it had the particular shade, has the latter vanished
so instantaneously from his memory while the former still remains? It may be
replied, that we always forget the details before we do the more general
characters; but that this answer is insufficient is, I think, shown by the
extreme disproportion between the length of time that the exact shade of
something looked at is remembered as compared with that instantaneous oblivion to
the exact shade of the thing imagined, and the but slightly superior vividness of
the memory of the thing seen as compared with the memory of the thing imagined.

The nominalists, I suspect, confound together thinking a triangle without
thinking that it is either equilateral, isosceles, or scalene, and thinking a
triangle without thinking whether it is equilateral, isosceles, or scalene.

It is important to remember that we have no intuitive power of
distinguishing between one subjective mode of cognition and another; and hence
often think that something is presented to us as a picture, while it is really
constructed from slight data by the understanding. This is the case with dreams,
as is shown by the frequent impossibility of giving an intelligible account of
one without adding something which we feel was not in the dream itself. Many
dreams, of which the waking memory makes elaborate and consistent stories, must
probably have been in fact mere jumbles of these feelings of the ability to
recognize this and that which I have just alluded to.

I will now go so far as to say that we have no images even in actual
perception. It will be sufficient to prove this in the case of vision; for if no
picture is seen when we look at an object, it will not be claimed that hearing,
touch, and the other senses, are superior to sight in this respect. That the
picture is not painted on the nerves of the retina is absolutely certain, if, as
physiologists inform us, these nerves are needlepoints pointing to the light and
at distances considerably greater than the minimum visibile. The same thing is
shown by our not being able to perceive that there is a large blind spot near the
middle of the retina. If, then, we have a picture before us when we see, it is
one constructed by the mind at the suggestion of previous sensations. Supposing
these sensations to be signs, the understanding by reasoning from them could
attain all the knowledge of outward things which we derive from sight, while the
sensations are quite inadequate to forming an image or representation absolutely
determinate. If we have such an image or picture, we must have in our minds a
representation of a surface which is only a part of every surface we see, and we
must see that each part, however small, has such and such a color. If we look
from some distance at a speckled surface, it seems as if we did not see whether
it were speckled or not; but if we have an image before us, it must appear to us
either as speckled, or as not speckled. Again, the eye by education comes to
distinguish minute differences of color; but if we see only absolutely
determinate images, we must, no less before our eyes are trained than afterwards,
see each color as particularly such and such a shade. Thus to suppose that we
have an image before us when we see, is not only a hypothesis which explains
nothing whatever, but is one which actually creates difficulties which require
new hypotheses in order to explain them away.

One of these difficulties arises from the fact that the details are less
easily distinguished than, and forgotten before, the general circumstances. Upon
this theory, the general features exist in the details: the details are, in fact,
the whole picture. It seems, then, very strange that that which exists only
secondarily in the picture should make more impression than the picture itself.
It is true that in an old painting the details are not easily made out; but this
is because we know that the blackness is the result of time, and is no part of
the picture itself. There is no difficulty in making out the details of the
picture as it looks at present; the only difficulty is in guessing what it used
to be. But if we have a picture on the retina, the minutest details are there as
much as, nay, more than, the general outline and significancy of it. Yet that
which must actually be seen, it is extremely difficult to recognize; while that
which is only abstracted from what is seen is very obvious.

But the conclusive argument against our having any images, or absolutely
determinate representations in perception, is that in that case we have the
materials in each such representation for an infinite amount of conscious
cognition, which we yet never become aware of. Now there is no meaning in saying
that we have something in our minds which never has the least effect on what we
are conscious of knowing. The most that can be said is, that when we see we are
put in a condition in which we are able to get a very large and perhaps
indefinitely great amount of knowledge of the visible qualities of objects.

Moreover, that perceptions are not absolutely determinate and singular is
obvious from the fact that each sense is an abstracting mechanism. Sight by
itself informs us only of colors and forms. No one can pretend that the images of
sight are determinate in reference to taste. They are, therefore, so far general
that they are neither sweet nor non-sweet, bitter nor non-bitter, having savor
nor insipid.

The next question is whether we have any general conceptions except in
judgments. In perception, where we know a thing as existing, it is plain that
there is a judgment that the thing exists, since a mere general concept of a
thing is in no case a cognition of it as existing. It has usually been said,
however, that we can call up any concept without making any judgment; but it
seems that in this case we only arbitrarily suppose ourselves to have an
experience. In order to conceive the number 7, I suppose, that is, I arbitrarily
make the hypothesis or judgment, that there are certain points before my eyes,
and I judge that these are seven. This seems to be the most simple and rational
view of the matter, and I may add that it is the one which has been adopted by
the best logicians. If this be the case, what goes by the name of the association
of images is in reality an association of judgments. The association of ideas is
said to proceed according to three principles -- those of resemblance, of
contiguity, and of causality. But it would be equally true to say that signs
denote what they do on the three principles of resemblance, contiguity, and
causality. There can be no question that anything is a sign of whatever is
associated with it by resemblance, by contiguity, or by causality: nor can there
be any doubt that any sign recalls the thing signified. So, then, the association
of ideas consists in this, that a judgment occasions another judgment, of which
it is the sign. Now this is nothing less nor more than inference.

Everything in which we take the least interest creates in us its own
particular emotion, however slight this may be. This emotion is a sign and a
predicate of the thing. Now, when a thing resembling this thing is presented to
us, a similar emotion arises; hence, we immediately infer that the latter is like
the former. A formal logician of the old school may say, that in logic no term
can enter into the conclusion which had not been contained in the premisses, and
that therefore the suggestion of something new must be essentially different from
inference. But I reply that that rule of logic applies only to those arguments
which are technically called completed. We can and do reason --

Elias was a man;
[Ergo,]. He was mortal.

And this argument is just as valid as the full syllogism, although it is so only
because the major premiss of the latter happens to be true. If to pass from the
judgment "Elias was a man" to the judgment "Elias was mortal," without actually
saying to one's self that "All men are mortal," is not inference, then the term
"inference" is used in so restricted a sense that inferences hardly occur outside
of a logic-book.

What is here said of association by resemblance is true of all association.
All association is by signs. Everything has its subjective or emotional
qualities, which are attributed either absolutely or relatively, or by
conventional imputation to anything which is a sign of it. And so we reason,

The sign is such and such;
[Ergo,] The sign is that thing.

This conclusion receiving, however, a modification, owing to other
considerations, so as to become --

The sign is almost (is representative of) that thing.

We come now to the consideration of the last of the four principles whose
consequences we were to trace; namely, that the absolutely incognizable is
absolutely inconceivable. That upon Cartesian principles the very realities of
things can never be known in the least, most competent persons must long ago have
been convinced. Hence the breaking forth of idealism, which is essentially
anti-Cartesian, in every direction, whether among empiricists (Berkeley, Hume),
or among noologists (Hegel, Fichte). The principle now brought under discussion
is directly idealistic; for, since the meaning of a word is the conception it
conveys, the absolutely incognizable has no meaning because no conception
attaches to it. It is, therefore, a meaningless word; and, consequently, whatever
is meant by any term as "the real" is cognizable in some degree, and so is of the
nature of a cognition, in the objective sense of that term.

At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that is, of
cognitions which have been logically derived by induction and hypothesis from
previous cognitions which are less general, less distinct, and of which we have a
less lively consciousness. These in their turn have been derived from others
still less general, less distinct, and less vivid; and so on back
to the ideal first, which is quite singular, and quite out of consciousness. This ideal
first is the particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist as such. That is,
there is no thing which is in-itself in the sense of not being relative to the
mind, though things which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from that
relation. The cognitions which thus reach us by this infinite series of
inductions and hypotheses (which though infinite a parte ante logice, is yet as
one continuous process not without a beginning in time) are of two kinds, the
true and the untrue, or cognitions whose objects are real and those whose objects
are unreal. And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must
first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is,
when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact
logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations,
to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the
long run. The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and
reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the
vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows
that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without
definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. And so those
two series of cognition -- the real and the unreal -- consist of those which, at
a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to re-affirm; and
of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied. Now, a
proposition whose falsity can never be discovered, and the error of which
therefore is absolutely incognizable, contains, upon our principle, absolutely no
error. Consequently, that which is thought in these cognitions is the real, as it
really is. There is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things as they
really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless cases,
although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any special case.

But it follows that since no cognition of ours is absolutely determinate,
generals must have a real existence. Now this scholastic realism is usually set
down as a belief in metaphysical fictions. But, in fact, a realist is simply one
who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true
representation. Since, therefore, the word "man" is true of something, that which
"man" means is real. The nominalist must admit that man is truly applicable to
something; but he believes that there is beneath this a thing in itself, an
incognizable reality. His is the metaphysical figment. Modern nominalists are
mostly superficial men, who do not know, as the more thorough Roscellinus and
Occam did, that a reality which has no representation is one which has no
relation and no quality. The great argument for nominalism is that there is no
man unless there is some particular man. That, however, does not affect the
realism of Scotus; for although there is no man of whom all further determination
can be denied, yet there is a man, abstraction being made of all further
determination. There is a real difference between man irrespective of what the
other determinations may be, and man with this or that particular series of
determinations, although undoubtedly this difference is only relative to the mind
and not in re. Such is the position of Scotus. Occam's great objection is, there can be no real distinction which is not in re, in the thing-in-itself; but this begs the question for it is itself based only on the notion that reality is
something independent of representative relation.

Such being the nature of reality in general, in what does the reality of
the mind consist? We have seen that the content of consciousness, the entire
phenomenal manifestation of mind, is a sign resulting from inference. Upon our
principle, therefore, that the absolutely incognizable does not exist, so that
the phenomenal manifestation of a substance is the substance, we must conclude
that the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference. What
distinguishes a man from a word? There is a distinction doubtless. The material
qualities, the forces which constitute the pure denotative application, and the
meaning of the human sign, are all exceedingly complicated in comparison with
those of the word. But these differences are only relative. What other is there?
It may be said that man is conscious, while a word is not. But consciousness is a
very vague term. It may mean that emotion which accompanies the reflection that
we have animal life. This is a consciousness which is dimmed when animal life is
at its ebb in old age, or sleep, but which is not dimmed when the spiritual life
is at its ebb; which is the more lively the better animal a man is, but which is
not so, the better man he is. We do not attribute this sensation to words,
because we have reason to believe that it is dependent upon the possession of an
animal body. But this consciousness, being a mere sensation, is only a part of
the material quality of the man-sign. Again, consciousness is sometimes used to
signify the I think, or unity in thought; but the unity is nothing but
consistency, or the recognition of it. Consistency belongs to every sign, so far
as it is a sign; and therefore every sign, since it signifies primarily that it
is a sign, signifies its own consistency. The man-sign acquires information, and
comes to mean more than he did before. But so do words. Does not electricity mean
more now than it did in the days of Franklin? Man makes the word, and the word
means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some man. But
since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might
turn round and say: "You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only
so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought." In fact,
therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of a
man's information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a
word's information.

Without fatiguing the reader by stretching this parallelism too far, it is
sufficient to say that there is no element whatever of man's consciousness which
has not something corresponding to it in the word; and the reason is obvious. It
is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that
every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train
of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external
sign, proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the
external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man
are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the
thought.

It is hard for man to understand this, because he persists in identifying
himself with his will, his power over the animal organism, with brute force. Now
the organism is only an instrument of thought. But the identity of a man consists
in the consistency of what he does and thinks, and consistency is the
intellectual character of a thing; that is, is its expressing something.

Finally, as what anything really is, is what it may finally come to be known
to be in the ideal state of complete information, so that reality depends on the
ultimate decision of the community; so thought is what it is, only by virtue of
its addressing a future thought which is in its value as thought identical with
it, though more developed. In this way, the existence of thought now depends on
what is to be hereafter; so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on
the future thought of the community.

The individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by
ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from
what he and they are to be, is only a negation. This is man,

". . . proud man,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence."

Notes

1. Several persons versed in logic have objected that I have here quite misapplied the term hypothesis, and that what I so designate is an argument from analogy. It is a sufficient reply to say that the example of the cipher has been given as an apt illustration of hypothesis by Descartes (Rule 10, Oeuvres choisies: Paris, 1865, page 334), by Leibniz (Nouveaux Essais, lib. 4, ch. 12, §13, Ed. Erdmann, p. 383 b), and (as I learn from D. Stewart; Works, vol. 3, pp. 305 et seqq.) by Gravesande, Boscovich, Hartley, and G.L. Le Sage. The term Hypothesis has been used in the following senses: 1. For the theme or proposition forming the subject of discourse. 2. For an assumption. Aristotle divides theses or propositions adopted without any reason into definitions and hypotheses. The latter are propositions stating the existence of something. Thus the geometer says, "Let there be a triangle." 3. For a condition in a general sense. We are said to seek other things than happiness ex hypotheseos, conditionally. The best republic is the ideally perfect, the second the best on earth, the third the best ex hypotheseos, under the circumstances. Freedom is the hypothesis or condition of democracy. 4. For the antecedent of a hypothetical proposition. 5. For an oratorical question which assumes facts. 6. In the Synopsis of Psellus, for the reference of a subject to the things it denotes. 7. Most commonly in modern times, for the conclusion of an argument from consequence and consequent to antecedent. This is my use of the term. 8. For such a conclusion when too weak to be a theory accepted into the body of a science.

Sir Wm. Hamilton. -- "Hypotheses, that is, propositions which
are assumed with probability, in order to explain or prove something else which cannot otherwise be explained or proved." -- Lectures on Logic (Am. Ed.), p. 188.
"The name of hypothesis is more emphatically given to provisory
suppositions, which serve to explain the phenomena in so far as observed, but which are only asserted to be true, if ultimately confirmed by a complete induction." -- Ibid., p. 364.
"When a phenomenon is presented which can be explained by no
principle afforded through experience, we feel discontented and uneasy; and there arises an effort to discover some cause which may, at least provisionally, account for the outstanding phenomenon; and this cause is finally recognized as valid and true, if, through it, the given phenomenon is found to obtain a full and perfect explanation. The judgment in which a phenomenon is referred to such a problematic cause, is called a Hypothesis." -- Ibid., pp. 449, 450. See also Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 117.

J.S. Mill. -- "An hypothesis is any supposition which we make
(either without actual evidence, or on evidence avowedly insufficient), in order to endeavor to deduce from it conclusions in accordance with facts which are known to be real; under the idea that if the conclusions to which the hypothesis leads are known truths, the hypothesis itself either must be, or at least is likely to be true." -- Logic (6th Ed.), vol. 2, p. 8.

Kant. -- "If all the consequents of a cognition are true, the
cognition itself is true. . . . It is allowable, therefore, to conclude from consequent to a reason, but without being able to determine this reason. From the complexus of all consequents alone can we conclude the truth of a determinate reason . . . The difficulty with this positive and direct mode of inference (modus ponens) is that the totality of the consequents cannot be apodeictically recognized, and that we are therefore led by this mode of inference only to a probable and hypothetically true cognition (Hypotheses)." -- Logik by Jäsche; Werke, Ed. Rosenk. and Sch., vol. 3, p. 221.
"A hypothesis is the judgment of the truth of a reason on
account of the sufficiency of the consequents." -- Ibid., p. 262.

3. Observe that I say in itself. I am not
so wild as to deny that my sensation of red today is like my
sensation of red yesterday. I only say that the similarity can
consist only in the physiological force behind consciousness
-- which leads me to say, I recognize this feeling the same as the former one, and so does not consist in a community of sensation. Return to text.

4. Accordingly, just as we say that a body is
in motion, and not that motion is in a body we ought to say that
we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us.Return to text.

6. No person whose native tongue is English will
need to be informed that contemplation is essentially (1) protracted,
(2) voluntary, and (3) an action, and that it is never used for that
which is set forth to the mind in this act. A foreigner can convince
himself of this by the proper study of English writers. Thus, Locke
(Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chap. 19, § 1) says,
"If it [an idea] be held there [in view] long under attentive
consideration, 'tis Contemplation"; and again (Ibid., Book II, chap.
10, § 1) "keeping the Idea which is brought into it [the mind] for
some time actually in view, which is called Contemplation." This term
is therefore unfitted to translate Anschauung; for this latter does
not imply an act which is necessarily protracted or voluntary, and
denotes most usually a mental presentation, sometimes a faculty, less
often the reception of an impression in the mind, and seldom, if
ever, an action. To the translation of Anschauung by intuition, there
is, at least, no such insufferable objection. Etymologically, the two
words precisely correspond. The original philosophical meaning of
intuition was a cognition of the present manifold in that character;
and it is now commonly used, as a modern writer says, "to include all
the products of the perceptive (external or internal) and imaginative
faculties; every act of consciousness, in short, of which the
immediate object is an individual, thing, act, or state of mind,
presented under the condition of distinct existence in space and
time." Finally, we have the authority of Kant's own example for
translating his Anschauung by Intuitus; and indeed this is the common
usage of Germans writing Latin. Moreover, intuitiv frequently
replaces anschauend or anschaulich. If this constitutes a
misunderstanding of Kant, it is one which is shared by himself and
nearly all his countrymen.
Return to text.